


Walk in the park date

by fandomfan



Series: James Dates [3]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: Blushing Flint, Gen, Light flirtation via Milton and compliments, Tiptoeing toward Silverflintmadi, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-01
Updated: 2018-01-01
Packaged: 2019-02-26 12:01:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13235313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fandomfan/pseuds/fandomfan
Summary: Madi would like to know Flint better.





	Walk in the park date

**Author's Note:**

> Set early season 4ish. You don't need to read the previous dates in this series to get this one.

“Come with me,” Madi says from the doorway, and Flint hears it for the order it is. An order she is accustomed to issuing in this place. Her place. An order he is grateful to follow after so long giving the orders himself.

He nods and rises, ankles cracking, hip joints aching. Fuck, he feels like he’s aged ten years since they arrived on Maroon Island. He’s been hollowed out by all that’s transpired here—from the storm through to Silver’s loss and reappearance—he’s begun to feel as though he is merely a shell of a man in the shape of a military strategist. He has less energy for it each day, being Captain Flint. If someone else has the vigour to take control, he is increasingly happy to cede it.

There was a time when he’d drawn strength from Silver at his side. When their bond had seemed paramount and unbreakable, when he’d felt the warmth of Silver’s regard, and thought perhaps they might... But no.

Of course not.

Silver is young and beautiful and Flint is many things but not those. When a person catches the eye of someone like Madi, in whom a person's own beauty and charisma find their match, there is little reason to make another choice. Flint will do his best to ready the pair of them for the mantle of leadership, and if he survives... he is not entirely sure what then. What is Odysseus with no home to return to but a lost soul, forever adrift? He is determined that he will not be Silver’s problem. Nor Madi’s.

So he rises with every one of his years and aches on his shoulders and follows Madi out the door. He marshalls tactics and plans in his mind as she leads him beyond the settlement, readying for whatever strategy she may want to discuss in privacy. When he sees where she is taking them, however, he balks.

He struggles for a moment to make blank his face. “I taught Silver to fight here, you know,” he tells her, sweeping his arm to encompass the cliffs overlooking the sea.

“He told me,” she replies, inscrutable as ever.

“Would you also like tutelage in swordsmanship?”

Madi laughs, a rich, low sound. “I would not, Captain.”

“Then what would you have from me?”

“Merely some of your time this afternoon,” she says enigmatically.

Flint sighs. He is too weary to play diplomacy when they are not at the negotiating table. “I can give you my time at the camp,” he says, jaw tight. “I do not know what Silver told you of our sessions on these cliffs, but this is not a place I would soon return to.”

Madi breaks her stoic facade with a frown as she peers up into Flint's face. “He hurt you up here, did he not?”

Flint says nothing, but whatever she sees in his face makes her click her tongue against her teeth. “I could slap that man sometimes,” she says, shaking her head. “I am afraid he is not always able to be good to the people who are good to him.” She places one hand compassionately on Flint's shoulder. “I hope he apologises to you for that someday.”

The words are an unlooked-for balm to something sore in Flint's chest. He is glad for this woman who will never stop surprising him, who will always push Silver to be the best of himself.

He nods at her and asks, “Will that be all, then?”

Madi’s hand remains on his shoulder as she answers, “I hope not, for I had not intended to discomfit you today, nor to spend all our time talking about John.”

It is Flint's turn to frown in confusion. “Then what did you hope to accomplish?”

She smiles at him, a small, new-fledged thing. “I hoped to come to know you better,” she says, surprising him yet again. “I saw you when John was gone and when he returned. He speaks of you with such intensity, and I am only beginning to see what inspires that. I had hoped we might talk freely about topics other than war or John Silver.”

Flint is nonplussed. When did someone last want to talk to him of something other than war or John Silver? He laughs ruefully as he realises he feels quite like he did in the early days with Thomas and Miranda, when he could not understand why two such brilliant, well-bred people should care to hear the opinion of the jumped-up son of a carpenter’s mate.

“Are you laughing at me?” Madi asks, a hint of humour gliding around the corners of her earnest enquiry.

“No,” Flint assures her, pressing his hand atop hers when she begins to remove it from his shoulder. “At myself. At how much you remind me of some people I knew when I was younger.”

She smiles a little, then, and takes his arm like any gentlewoman to be escorted, and they begin to walk along the cliff path. They have only gone a dozen paces when she asks, “Do you mean Thomas Hamilton?” causing Flint a stuttered step in their stroll.

“What did Silver tell you about him?” he asks cautiously.

“That you and he worked closely together on plans for New Providence Island,” Madi says. “That he was a nobleman who had sympathy for society’s outcasts. That he was an important influence on your life and a good friend.” She looks at Flint, assessing. “And he said that if I wanted to know more, I would need to ask it from you directly, for he would not share what you told him in confidence.”

For a moment, Flint is warmed to know Silver kept his trust, that Silver did not take an easy opportunity to use the power Flint had put into his hands to hurt. And then he is struck by the powerful realisation that the truth holds no more power to hurt him, now that his is no longer the most carefully created name in West Indies piracy. He halts and looks Madi full in the face and tells her, “Thomas was my lover. My great love. He and his wife Miranda, both of them.”

She looks back at him, just as directly. “And they are both gone?”

“Yes.”

She is silent for a moment, her eyes moving over his face. Finally, she lifts her hand from his arm and places it very softly on his cheek. “I am sorry you suffered such a loss, but glad you found such a love.”

There is immense tenderness in her voice. Tenderness with no trace of the shock or reproach Flint still, in some part of him, expects. He finds his throat closing and his eyes wet.

“Thank you,” he manages.

“Thank _you_  for sharing your story with me,” she says, then stands silent with him as he masters his emotions, her warm hand on his cheek and her kind eyes on his all the while.

At length, Flint tucks her hand back into the crook of his arm and walks them along the path once more.

“You would have liked them. Thomas especially, I think,” he says, wistfully. The thought of them meeting brings him more fondness than pain. “I know he would have liked you. The two of you would have debated circles around anyone else. You’d still be in the library long after everyone else had gone, arguing over morality and philosophy and politics.”

Madi chuckles. “I should like to sit in the library of an English lord who would look past my skin and my sex and find me a worthy debate partner.”

“He would have done that, to be sure,” Flint says. “Thomas could never pass up the chance at a discussion with a well-read, independent-thinking radical.”

“Why, Captain,” Madi smiles. “From you, I do believe that was quite the compliment.” She sketches a small curtsey.

Flint returns her smile and bends at the waist to kiss the back of her hand. “Indeed,” he says. “As it was intended, Princess.”

She grins in a way that wrinkles her nose quite endearingly, and for a fleeting moment, Flint allows himself to feel as though he is merely James: a man escorting a woman on a promenade. He feels light in a way he hasn’t in months.

“Tell me what you and Thomas Hamilton read and debated, then,” she says as they walk on. The exhausted listlessness that has swamped him ebbs before this clever woman’s attentive interest.

“When he met someone new, he often preferred to start with Milton,” Flint says.

“'Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties',” Madi recites.

“Yes.” Flint thinks of how delighted Thomas would be and can feel one corner of his mouth turn up the way the Hamiltons always said they loved. “Yes, precisely.”

"I suspect he particularly enjoyed debates about Milton that caused that look on your face," she says, catching him off guard yet again.

"You are more right than you know," he says. "Though I could not say what about this look on my face is so intriguing."

"It is the look of a man amused and in love," she replies, smiling. "If I made a handsome man look like that, I should have a difficult time looking away."

Flint laughs. "You mock me, Princess, albeit gracefully.”

Madi's smile takes on a spritely edge that, were he fifteen years younger, he might call flirtatious. "You do yourself less credit than you deserve. It is hardly mockery to tell a man he is handsome when it is so."

Perversely, something goes easy in Flint's shoulders to realise that he is blushing at her words, though he turns his face towards the waves that Madi might not see. It has been quite some time since a well-favoured young person has so openly played the coquette with him. “You may save the ‘handsome’ talk for Silver,” he says. 

Madi smiles knowingly at him, missing nothing. “He _is_ quite nice to look at, is he not?” She mercifully leaves him no room to fumble further in this suddenly strange situation. “I am not shy to tell him so, nor to tell him I think the same of you.” Flint feels his flush deepen, and, odd but true, it further lightens his spirit.

They continue along the cliffs a few more paces before Madi adds, “He agrees with me, you know. That you are handsome.”

Flint's heart performs a complicated manoeuvre at this, and it is high time to put this foolishness to rest before he finds himself distracted thinking things might be possible that are not possible. “Princess,” he cuts in before she can pull out any further confounding statements, “Might I suggest we leave off discussing who finds whom handsome and perhaps return to literature or philosophy.”

She looks at him appraisingly, then nods, decisive. “Very well. The matter is closed. For now. Should there come a time to... reassess the situation between yourself, myself, and John, I would like to know you better, as I said.” 

She is every inch regal and shows no shame whatsoever in discussing... can she be discussing…? She sounds no different than she does at a treaty negotiation: clear-eyed and direct. Flint bows his head to her, unsure but following her lead in this as in an increasing number of other concerns. “Thomas and Miranda would have adored you,” is what he offers, in the end.

Madi smiles, broad and warm as a noontide sky. “Thank you, Captain. I have only some small idea of what those words mean to you, but I think they are deeply complimentary, indeed.”

“They are, Princess,” Flint assures her, smiling in return.  “Now, Milton?”

She laughs, tucks her arm tighter into his, and answers, “Yes, Milton,” and they walk through the waving grasses on the seaside cliffs and talk and come to know each other better.

**Author's Note:**

> Come imagine James and Madi's conversations with me at [Tumblr](http://fand0mfan.tumblr.com).


End file.
